3 Best Marketing and Advertising Strategies of Famous Luxury Brands
What makes a brand luxurious?
Well, there’s no sure-shot answer to this. It’s an amalgam of the rarity of the brand’s products, quality, craftsmanship, and history and heritage. People pay more for premium products because luxury brands offer their consumers exactly what they seek and, at times, more. However, becoming a luxury brand takes time, consistency and, most importantly–innovative marketing strategies.
Luxury brands spend about 33% of their advertising budgets on digital marketing. The stat is enough to tell you the importance of strategic advertising. To help you kickstart your ad strategizing journey, we’ve listed a few advertising campaigns of luxury brands in this article.
Whether your brand comes under the luxury bracket or you aspire to bring it, this article speaks to businesses belonging to both categories.
Back to Basics: Digital Marketing Strategies for Luxury Brands
How about starting with a bold statistic about the influence of digital marketing on the sales of the luxury goods? Yeap!
As per the findings of a comprehensive brand research report by Think with Google, titled “How Affluent Shoppers Buy Luxury Goods,” an impressive 72% of luxury shoppers turn to social media for their brand research. Conducted in 2019, this study involved surveying over 3,000 luxury shoppers from 12 countries, providing valuable insights into the growing impact of social media platforms on the purchasing behaviors of discerning consumers within the luxury market. The report highlights the significant role social media plays in shaping consumer preferences and decisions in the ever-evolving landscape of luxury retail.
In other words, the digital world offers luxury brands an excellent open platform for showcasing their products and features & create brand awareness. Through online channels, luxury brands can engage with their target audience, share captivating and relevant content, and create a high-end brand experience. This digital presence allows them to reach a global audience and build a community of loyal customers who appreciate their offerings and values.
Luxury branding strategies and the digital landscape, in general, offer a unique opportunity for luxury brands to tell their story, showcase their craftsmanship, and establish an emotional connection with consumers in ways that were not as easily achievable through traditional marketing channels. But first, you need to build a digital marketing strategy (or at least learn how to do so)!
The advertising strategy of luxury brands depends on factors such as its target audience, budget, resources, etc. However, there are a few generic ways to devise advertising strategies. Before diving into the fundamentals of luxury brands’ marketing strategies, best to remind you that almost all of these brands partnered with fashion & retail agencies to have a strong online presence.
Now, we can start.
Quick Guide to Content Marketing for Luxury Brands
Ordinary brands communicate in order to sell products to consumers. Luxury brands communicate in order to keep the dream alive in the minds of consumers.
Adriaan Brits, author of “Luxury Brand Marketing: The Globalization of Luxury Brand Cults”
While content marketing contains various aspects of digital marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising, we intend to approach each aspect separately in our focus. Instead of treating them as a collective whole, we will delve into the unique characteristics and strategies of content marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising individually.
Let’s start with advises on content marketing for luxury brands:
Focusing on Exclusivity All the Time
No need to say, luxury brands “must” focus on generating a sense of exclusivity and aspiration in their any kind of content marketing efforts. This can be achieved through the use of high-quality images and videos, featuring celebrities or influencers, and incorporating taglines that evoke feelings of luxury and sophistication.
Collaborating with Influencers
Teaming up with influencers provides a perfect avenue for luxury brands seeking to broaden their reach. Influencers can effectively promote the brand’s products and services to their dedicated followers, amplifying the brand’s presence and credibility in the digital realm.
As an example of influencer marketing, Gucci partnered with well-known pop singer Miley Cyrus to promote their new Gucci Flora Gorgeus Magnolia Eau de Perfume.
Within luxury brand advertising campaigns, brands don’t limit their collaborations with celebrities to just limited edition collections or products; they cherish partnering with celebrities on various occasions. Here’s another example from Chanel:
Telling Your Unique Story
In their advertising campaigns, we see luxury brands share their captivating stories through various channels. These stories mostly revolve around the brand’s heritage, its core values, or the unique features of its products. By creating engaging and emotionally resonant stories, the brands build a strong connection with its target audience.
Here is another Gucci example including an exhibition of its signature handbags – Bamboo 1947, Horsebit 1955 and Jackie 1961.
Actually, that’s not surprising when considering Gucci’s marketing strategy through years. Need more examples telling the story of brands? Louis Vuitton has always something to show when it comes to telling stories:
Checking out Tips on SEO for Luxury Brands
When it comes to content marketing, SEO becomes a topic at some point.
To enhance their online presence, luxury brands can take the advantage of several SEO strategies. First, focusing on long-tail keywords allows them to target more specific and less competitive phrases, catering to niche audiences effectively. Creating high-quality and SEO-optimized content is vital to engage their target market, providing valuable information while making it search engine friendly. Additionally, building backlinks from reputable websites enhances their website’s authority and credibility, signaling to search engines that their site is trustworthy. Participating in guest blogging, publishing articles on other platforms, and engaging in social media discussions are effective ways to build these backlinks.
What’s more, paying attention to technical SEO, optimizing the technical sides of their websites is another good call. Ensuring website speed, mobile-friendliness, and security optimizing their ranking potential in search results.
Quick Guide to Paid Advertising Strategies for Luxury Brands
Allowing to monitor and analyze demographic data, interests, or even past purchase behavior, paid advertisement is another great marketing tool for luxury brands.
We witness that a great number of luxury brands take advantage of search engine advertising, display ads, social media ads, and email marketing to reach people who may not be actively looking for what you have to offer, but who might be interested if they see it.
Especially through SEA (search engine advertising), businesses bid on keywords that are relevant to their brand and display their products in the search results easily. Additionally, by using display advertising tools, they reach the target audience via text, images, or videos.
While doing so, using high-resolution images, videos, and taglines & messages which create a sense of luxury and sophistication is undoubtedly a good idea! Like in every sector, in the luxury market, it is important to use emotional appeals evoking customers’ desire for exclusivity.
Quick Guide to Social Media Marketing Strategies for Luxury Brands
Let’s kick off with a fact: Luxury brands have to be super careful and strategic with their social media posts since they’re targeting a more well-off audience. They can’t come across as too pushy or salesy either.
In addition to embracing aspirational language and imagery, luxury brands need to be careful about the messaging they use in their social media posts. Additionally, they are expected to be emotionally resonant with their “high-class” customers while promoting their products. Short story long, luxury brands need a full-circle social media strategy that generate excitement around the brand.
Building a 360-degree luxury-focused social media strategy working seamlessly is not a picnic at all. That’s why most-known luxury brands are partnering with agencies for their marketing needs. Before getting advice on social media marketing, you may want to discover the best luxury agencies in the UK.
Use High-Quality Photographs
Good quality photographs of a product make adding the term luxury before the product easy.
High-quality photographs evoke the required emotions in consumers that create brand awareness and aid in marketing the product, leaving a lasting impact on the user. Here is the proof that Chanel knows how to play the game:
Let’s take a minute to discover a few key benefits of good photographs of the products are:
- High-quality visuals instantly attract the user’s eyes and provoke a specific emotion. Moreover, a stellar image creates aspiration among its target audience.
- You get to convey your brand story and values via imagery that captures and communicates the essence of your brand.
- With high-quality photographs, you can show even the most mundane and minute detail of the product with greater ease.
- Showcasing your product through a particular setting or by associating with an influencer sets an aspiration in the minds of consumers.
- High-quality pictures attract more followers, cultivating a solid consumer base.
Use Aspirational Language
Images enable buyers in envisioning themselves as a part of the lifestyle represented in the image should they choose to purchase a product. However, ensure also to emphasize using aspirational text with images to provoke action among the consumers. Statements like setting the benchmark or going beyond the benchmark set the image’s tone even more.
Examples of aspirational words include– ultimate, dreamy, ambition, etc. Use words that express desire and compel the user to at least visualize themselves using the brand’s product or being willing to use them.
Remember, luxury is not all about a product being expensive. In fact, the exclusivity of the product and the vocabulary used to market and promote it in a way that resonates with the users cumulatively make it a luxurious effect.
Thus, it’s wise to partner with luxury marketing agencies to create exclusive marketing strategy for your brand.
Focus on the History and Heritage of Your Brand
A luxury brand marketing strategy must comprise the why. Conveying the story behind the brand and explaining the values that define the brand is a stepping stone to effective luxury marketing.
Expressing your brand values to the users generates advocacy for your brand online. Despite knowing this, many brands still focus on what they do instead of why they do what they do. So whether you’re a small business willing to upscale your marketing strategy or a luxury brand ready to revamp your luxury brand marketing strategy, ensure all your products have a story woven beneath their existence.
Now that we know ways for luxury marketing, let’s enlist a few brand campaigns that won the hearts of its consumers.
Here is a great example from a great luxury brand: Gucci.
Gucci’s 100 campaign celebrates the fashion house’s 100th year by taking its consumers through the commendable musical moments of the last century. The video pays homage to the house’s legacy by showcasing diverse characters moving through the different generations of music.
This marketing and advertising campaign of Gucci is the correct example of fantastic storytelling and bringing nostalgia to consumers. Through the video, the house assures its audience that they’ve seen a lot and they’ll be around to see more. It doesn’t differentiate between the past and the future.
Another one? Here is Louis Vuitton:
While there are many social media campaigns for fashion, Louis Vuitton being one of the largest fashion conglomerates is difficult to beat. Louis Vuitton celebrated the 200th anniversary of its founder Louis Vitton by incorporating the jewelry into the brand’s history.
The ad is the perfect example of brand storytelling and evoking an emotion in the viewers. The video leaves the viewers feeling empowered as it shows a woman’s journey, and the background music adds to the effect it aims to create. The ad was made in memory of Louis, barely a teenager, when he decided to set foot in Parish to become a legend in the fashion industry eventually. Bravery is a collection of ninety jewelry pieces celebrating his courageous spirit. Louis Vuitton’s marketing strategy has always been effective, enabling the brand to grow to become one of the most well-known luxury brands in the world.
Chanel’s Spring Summer 2023
Chanel promoting its spring-summer 2023 Ready-to-wear collection is the best example of how luxury ads can be visually appealing yet simplistic.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpzwxU3tOVt/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
For this year’s Spring-Summer campaign, actress Kristen Stewart is seen pulling off a timeless and sophisticated summer look in a black and white Paris backdrop and the South of France.
The pictures are shot to capture the essence of spring and summer and make you crave the look. You feel warm and fresh by looking at Chanel’s images. These are the positive feelings that the consumers eventually associate with the brand.
Wrapping up
Luxury brand marketing is successful when the brand creates a solid image and mystery around its specific product. Since luxury brands have a very peculiar consumer base, they need to present themselves in an exclusive and aspirational manner. The campaigns mentioned in this article will help you kickstart your brand’s advertising journey.
However, to market effectively, you must thoroughly understand your brand needs and devise campaigns addressing or expressing those needs.
